A man charged Thursday with murder hit a man with his SUV in St. Paul and tried to hide the damage to his vehicle by crashing into a highway barrier wall, a criminal complaint said.

The Ramsey County attorney’s office charged Moises Aguilar Nieves, 36, with two counts of second-degree murder. Nieves, of Richfield, told police he was protecting the woman he loved from a man she had previously dated.

The criminal complaint gives this account of what happened:

Police were dispatched Tuesday at 5:05 a.m. to the area of Jessamine Avenue and Woodbridge Street, on the city’s North End, about a man lying in the street. A person driving by had called police.

Sergio Escalona, also known as David Ramirez, appeared to have been dead for some time, and his body showed signs of having been hit by a vehicle. Pieces of a vehicle’s mirror were found nearby.

A 23-year-old woman approached officers on the scene and told them she had gotten off work about 3 a.m. and driven to her home, nearby on Woodbridge Street.

The woman said she and Escalona, 46, had dated some months prior. She said he had just returned from Mexico, called her and approached her Dodge Durango when she got home.

As Escalona stood at the woman’s driver’s-side door, a black sport utility vehicle struck the door and pinned Escalona against her vehicle.

The woman, identified by her initials in the complaint, said she blacked out, drove her car to the rear of her house and went to her room. She later talked to her father about what happened.

The woman told an officer she had talked to a friend named Moises for about 20 minutes after she got off work and then they went their separate ways.

Police discovered that Nieves and the woman worked at the same company in Bloomington and had both worked the second shift Monday to Tuesday, ending at 3 a.m.

Police also learned that Nieves is the registered owner of a GMC Yukon and that the State Patrol had taken a single-car accident report at 4:52 a.m. Tuesday involving the vehicle. The report said Nieves had struck the barrier wall at Minnesota 62 and Interstate 35W.

A St. Paul police investigator met with Nieves, who initially said he left work Tuesday and had an accident at Minnesota 62 and Interstate 35W. Nieves said he went to the hospital and was home by 8 a.m.

The investigator confronted Nieves about the story not being true. Nieves then said he had driven to St. Paul after work because he was concerned for his co-worker.

Nieves said the woman had told him “Sergio” had forced her to have sex with him on prior occasions and had been calling her that night while she was at work.

Nieves said he saw Escalona approach the woman’s car.

“When (Nieves) saw him, he got mad,” the complaint said. “He said that he drove his Yukon into Sergio to ‘scare him.’ He denied trying to kill him.”

Nieves told police he loved the woman “and that he did this to protect her from Sergio,” the complaint said. Police have said the woman and Nieves were in a relationship.

Nieves said he drove away after striking Escalona. He said he drove into the highway wall “to hide the damage to his vehicle,” the complaint said.

An autopsy found Escalona bled to death due to multiple traumatic injuries to his hip and pelvic region from the impact of the SUV.

Police arrested Nieves on Tuesday. He is being held in the Ramsey County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail.

Mara Gottfried has been a Pioneer Press reporter since 2001, mostly covering public safety. Gottfried lived in St. Paul as a young child and returned to the Twin Cities after graduating from the University of Maryland. You can reach her at 651-228-5262.

As you comment, please be respectful of other commenters and other viewpoints. Our goal with article comments is to provide a space for civil, informative and constructive conversations. We reserve the right to remove any comment we deem to be defamatory, rude, insulting to others, hateful, off-topic or reckless to the community. See our full terms of use here.

More in News

A 60-year-old Faribault man was killed Thursday evening when his car collided with a semitrailer in Rice County. The Minnesota State Patrol reported that Randy J. Hansen was driving a 1995 Pontiac Grand Am southbound on Highway 21 and making a left turn to continue eastbound on 21 shortly after 5:30 p.m. when his car collided with a semi going...

Transit for Liveable Communities and St. Paul Smart Trips are merging Jan. 1 to create a new nonprofit organization to promote buses, trains, bikes, car sharing, walking and other alternatives to putting more cars on the road.

DULUTH, Minn. — A Roanoke, Va., multimillionaire who made his fortune in health care and has recently purchased coal mines wants to buy the bankrupt Magnetation LLC operations on Minnesota’s Iron Range and put laid-off employees back to work. That’s the plan of Tom Clarke, owner of ERP Compliant Fuels and now ERP Iron Ore, who has brokered a deal...

Renaldo Terez McDaniel was looking under the hood of his car outside a St. Paul auto-parts store on a summer evening last June when three shots were fired. One hit the 31-year-old McDaniel in the shoulder, another pierced his stomach. The third struck his head.

Delta Air Lines is rolling out new free snacks for customers in the main cabin, including brand-name yogurt bars and pretzels. Some will come in larger portions than before because, Delta has figured out, that’s what customers crave.

MADISON, Wis. — University of Wisconsin System officials Thursday approved raising tuition for out-of-state, graduate and professional school students by hundreds of dollars at more than a half-dozen campuses as they grapple with a Republican-imposed freeze on in-state undergraduate tuition. The plan calls for increases at UW-Eau Clare, UW-Green Bay, UW-La Crosse, UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Stout and all the system’s two-year...